A Mask of Lies
by WeasleySeeker
Summary: "...it was always on his mind, and he would sometimes take it out and twiddle it between his fingers, debating whether now would be a good time to read it, to unmask the lie that was Mary Watson, but it never quite reached a USB port. " (S3 spoilers)


_"If you love me, don't read that in front of me... because you won't love me when you're finished."_

He kept it in his jacket pocket. Always. He had no idea why - he hadn't even plucked up the courage to read it yet, but from what Mary said, it didn't seem like he was going to enjoy the experience.

It was weird, the way he carried it around with him, and he knew it was weird - it was as if it was some kind of love letter, when in fact it was kind of the opposite. But it was always on his mind, and he would sometimes take it out and twiddle it between his fingers, debating whether now would be a good time to read it, to unmask the lie that was Mary Watson, but it never quite reached a USB port. He just couldn't do it.

He thought he knew her. He _married _the woman, for God's sake. But the contents of that cold, hard piece of plastic were apparently going to tell him otherwise, and it was obviously going to turn his world upside down.

For some reason that he knew wasn't quite logical, he blamed Sherlock. Of course he blamed Sherlock. He always blamed Sherlock, whether it was Sherlock's fault or not. Mary's past was nothing to do with Sherlock, of course, but if it wasn't for Sherlock he could have carried on living and loving in ignorance. He should have stayed dead. No, he shouldn't have died in the first place.

"You think you're so clever, don't you?" he exploded in Sherlock's hospital room one morning. "You think you're so damn clever."

"That's because I am," Sherlock replied, sounding almost puzzled. "Have you read it yet?"

He didn't bother to grace Sherlock with a reply, because they both knew that he hadn't.

It was too hard, all of it. He couldn't make himself read it, because he may not have trusted this woman anymore, but unfortunately that didn't stop him from loving her, or the child that was currently growing inside her. If he could press a magic button to stop himself from caring, he certainly would, but he didn't want to exchange the woman he loved - the woman who had _saved _him - for a murderer.

How many lies must she have told him in the time they'd known each other? Did she keep count? Did she even care? He'd told her things about himself that nobody else in the world knew, maybe even Sherlock. Sherlock could make deductions, but he didn't _understand_ in the way that Mary did.

"Mary? I'm scared," he told her on their wedding night.

"Scared?" She laughed, screwing up her face in the way that she always did. "Whatever for? I'm on top of the world, me."

"Oh, I didn't mean that I'm not happy," he assured her. "Of course I am. Happier than ever. I just... how do we know we're going to be good parents? What if the kid turns out... like Harry?" He'd barely talked about Harry to anyone except her.

She sighed, patting her stomach. "I don't think anyone knows, John," she said. He remembered, as he hardly ever did, that she was an orphan. (Of course, he had no idea if that was true now.) "But I promise you, there's nobody else I'd rather work it out with."

There were times, like that one, when she seemed so genuine. And even that night when she was talking to Sherlock, when he found out what she was, she sounded like she genuinely loved him. She told Sherlock not to tell him. Rather than the police or anyone else, he was the first person she wanted to keep it a secret from. _"Don't tell John."_

Their relationship was built on secrets and lies. He could see it now. If he'd been looking on from the sidelines, he would doubtless tell himself to get her out of his life.

But lots of people have things in their past that they don't want to share. Maybe Mary's were a bit more serious than most, but she'd trusted him with them now. He took out the memory stick again. Maybe it didn't matter who she was five or even ten years ago. It was the Mary Morstan of today that he'd fallen in love with, and it was that Mary that he'd married and that Mary that was going to give birth to his baby. AGRA was a different person, one that he'd never met and had no desire to.

He didn't really want to forgive her. But maybe he didn't want to let her past self affect his feelings for her present self, and while he was _very _pissed off with Mary Watson, John Watson was a softie and he hadn't stopped loving her.

He wasn't going to, either.

* * *

**A/N: Well we fiiiinally got a Series 3, so I fiiiinally wrote some Sherlock fanfic!**

**Some explanation: I'm a Johnlock shipper. I didn't like the idea of Mary. I wasn't expecting to like Mary.**

**But while I don't feel any differently about Johnlock, I adore Mary and John and for some reason I cried when he threw the memory stick into the fire... so I decided to think a bit about what went through John's head in those few months and this is what came out. :)**

**Hope you enjoyed! I've never written these characters before and I bashed this out in about an hour, so criticism is obviously more than welcome.**


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